After having a tough day at work yesterday today was smooth sailing. Everyone was in a pretty good mood (including me) and the students did well with the lessons today. I had one student insist on doing my hair, but he got a little too excited so I had to tickle him into submission. No more Mr. Nice Guy I guess.
One of my most challenging students (a young little guy named Fuwa) told me today that his mother is taking him out of English at the end of the month and putting him into a swimming class. Fuwa has had a tough time getting along with other students (and me, for that matter) and generally he spends the lesson looking for ways to either roughhouse with the other boy student or hit a girl on the head. Too much energy, I’d say, and maybe using up some of that energy in a swimming pool would make life easier for everyone.
The textbooks that we are using are starting to wind down to an end, and according to Nozaki sensei the next books will arrive sometime in August. That gives me some extra classes at the end of July and beginning of August to do whatever I would like. The challenge is to find something interesting and fun that isn’t too expensive or time consuming to implement. I’ll probably end up doing some review of the previous stuff, and maybe some fun and games. Today I announced a speech contest for my oldest grade school students, and although it will be a low-key casual affair I think they are somewhat interested. I didn’t really give them a choice, though.
Kuniko and I arrived at the station at the same time, and so we walked home together. A student from her school happened to be walking the same way, and her eyes bugged out when she saw us (holding hands) as we walked along. Kuniko gave her a cool nod, but I said hello and turned her face red.
We had Thai fried rice for dinner and then went out to rent some movies for Kuniko’s class. The rest of the evening was pretty quiet, just sipping iced coffees (actually cafe au laits) and staying cool inside. There’s word of a typhoon approaching this weekend, but it sure doesn’t feel like typhoon weather. We’ll see if it makes it to Japan.
